


Roll On

by pocketsizedquasar



Category: Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Genre: Angst, Doomed Timelines, Falling In Love, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, M/M, Poetry, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Unrequited, rating for language in chapter 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 2,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25435639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocketsizedquasar/pseuds/pocketsizedquasar
Summary: A collection of Moby Dick poems I wrote for Escapril (a daily poetry challenge for the month of April) this year, about Ishmael, Queequeg, and storytelling. A few other characters here and there.More specific content warnings, when necessary, in front of each of the poems.
Relationships: Captain Ahab/Starbuck (Moby Dick), Ishmael/Queequeg (Moby Dick)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	1. Day 1: Dawn (Ishmael/Queequeg)

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't write /all/ my Escapril poems on moby dick, but...most of them were.  
> As always, feel free to check out my comic adaptation of MD at [mobydick-thecomic.com](http://mobydick-thecomic.com)  
> enjoy!

"escapril" day 1: dawn 

_"and like the dawn you woke the world inside of me" - the oh hellos, 'like the dawn'_

_"they say we are asleep until we fall in love" - the great comet, 'dust and ashes'_

first time i saw you, really saw you, was in the morning, 

sun in my eyes, december in my lungs, your arm over my chest 

and then you, sitting up, sun in your hair and sleep in your eyes and light, 

light, light, all around you, 

rays all tangled up around your face and arms 

like someone bottled up the sun and bathed you in it 

and you didn't look at me, then, not really, 

left quickly, left quietly, and how could i blame you, really, after everything, 

but still, watching you leave, sunrise chasing you, sunlight clinging to your every move, 

still, my friend, 

i think i have spent my whole life in the darkness and 

looking at you then, really looking at you, for the first time, 

was like waking up.


	2. Day 3: Is Anyone Listening? (Ishmael)

“escapril” day 3: is anyone listening?

_"I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. Huh. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells." - Welcome to Night Vale_

_"but how else can i hope to explain myself here? and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself i must, else all these chapters might be naught" - Moby Dick, the Whiteness of the Whale_

you have heard this story before, my friends, 

i'm sure, 

but lean close, listen anyway. 

it may do you some good. 

i am not telling this story for you, my friend, 

but listen close, hear me anyway. 

it is burning me out from the inside, 

eating me alive, 

and so this may do me some good. 

i don't know how to tell you  _why_ i am telling you -- 

don't know how to say that no, 

it was never "inspiration" that made me tell this story, but 

something more like hunger, 

something more like greed, 

something more like survival. so 

let me tell you this story, night after night, 

let me tell you this story, a thousand and one times, 

like it is the only thing keeping me alive 

because maybe it is.


	3. Day 5: The View from Up Here (Ishmael)

"escapril" day 5: the view from up here

_"the bright side of the planet moves toward darkness/and the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour,/and for me, now as then, it is too much./there is too much world." -czeslaw milosz_

_"you once told me that the human eye is god's loneliest creation." -'on earth we're briefly gorgeous,' ocean vuong_

watch that ringed horizon expand around you helplessly

and tell me you don't find something terrifying to

all that endless. all that blue.

_(but it's beautiful, isn't it?_ _)_

i don't think i was made for this. my world was once

the size of a sailboat. the size of a promise.

no space for hollow weighing on us.

_(there's a certain elegance to emptiness.)_

my world is the size of tides and vacancy.

it hurts to look at. all that unbroken infinity isn't big enough

or narrow enough to hold what i have become.

_(there is so much. enough to drown in. not enough to swim.)_

i once found it enchanting. those shoreless watery pastures,

boundless and brilliant. i suppose i still do.

all that endless. all that blue.

_(my god, it's all around.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thinking of the song "charlie darwin" by the low anthem


	4. Day 6: Obsession (Ishmael, Ahab)

"escapril" day 6: obsession

_"i have hated the words and i have loved them, and i hope i have made them right" - the book thief, markus zusak_

i once knew a man with lightning in his eyes and curses in his hands. 

to speak of him is to speak only of war 

of a world beyond our making and our reckoning 

of a story twisted beyond imagining 

and it is terrifying -- i am terrified -- 

of what it has to tell me. 

i keep coming back to it. 

you would have spent the rest of your life chasing that whale. 

we vowed your vow. all our oaths were as binding as yours. 

so here i am. 

making sense of it. terrified of what it has to show me 

of picking apart your story only to find pieces of mine 

terrified of finding something akin to myself 

in your broken endings and tangled lines. 

but i keep coming back to it. 

if i could only -- 

i did not tell it right the first time. let me try again, 

and again. let me try to understand what happened 

in the only way i know how. again. let me get it right. 

if i could only -- 

i will spend the rest of my life chasing this tale. 

to speak of it all is to speak only of war. 

i stumbled and fought and failed through his binding, blinding oath 

his frenzied chase 

clambered out the other side but still 

it clings to my heels. 


	5. Day 8: Hometown (Queequeg/Ishmael)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> from Queequeg's POV.

"escapril" day 8: hometown 

_"and i keep you safe from harm/you hold me in your arms,/and i want to go home/but i am home" -riches and wonders, the mountain goats_

for the first time in a long time, someone asks me where i am from. 

he means it sincerely, i think. he means well. 

i don't know how to tell him home is something i can no longer put words to 

that it is the image on the back of my eyelids 

a constellation missing a star 

i don't have the words to tell him that home is a language i am slowly forgetting 

that my memory is a stone the ocean beats against 

that my body is a riddle my heart beats against 

so i do not tell him that. _(_ _not yet)._

instead i tell him the story i tell myself: of a home that i remember, 

of a language that's still mine. 

again, and again, he asks me of home. 

aloft or below, night or day, stumbling against me or sober, 

he will ask, 

never pushing, never forceful, 

just curious. and caring. 

i don't know how to tell him home looks different now 

like whispered stories and yellow hair 

like a passed pipe and a circle of friends 

each their own point in this strange new constellation and 

i don't have the words to tell him that 

when he looks at me and laughs _(_ _and all the stars are in his eyes)_

it is in a language i understand.


	6. Day 10: Parasitic (Ahab)

“escapril” day 10: parasitic 

_"his absence was a looming presence. the lack of him filled me with him.” -china miéville, railsea_

_"What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it...that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing... recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare?" - moby dick, 'the symphony'_

this is what happens when you drown a man in violence. 

put a man on a boat and give him a compass and he learns to sail. 

put a man on a boat and give him a lance and he learns to kill. 

give him both and eventually he drowns. 

judge me if you will. cast your stone. i will not excuse myself here, 

only explain. 

this is a story of anguish and anger. this is a story 

of greed and hunger. it is an old story. it is my story. perhaps yours. 

here, then, are the players: 

here is a man who has spent his whole life in violence. but he is 

already known. 

here is a shipowner of ire and ignorance. he knows the man is hurt 

and sends him out anyways. 

here is a child of callousy and carelessness. they left him to die 

and he had nowhere else to turn. 

here is whiteness. here is that pasteboard mask. here are those cowardly gods 

here is their fury and their injustice. here is their blasphemy and their 

impiety. here is that inscrutable malice. here is whiteness. here is 

how it takes and suffocates, how it smothers and suffers, how it extracts 

and exploits. gnaws at us all from the inside. here is violence. here is whiteness. 

and here is the whale. 

judge me if you will. god knows i deserve it. but 

i am what happens when you drown a man in violence.


	7. Day 14: Pink, Like Your Brain (Ishmael)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for depictions of gore (like, whale gore) and blood (like, whale blood), strong language

“escapril” day 14: pink, like your brain 

_"the ivory pequod was turned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. you would have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods." -moby dick, 'cutting in'_

slice it open, will you? 

cut right down to the fucking bone. 

watch your hands -- 

and your step and your neck 

mind the fingers, greenie, steadier hands than yours 

have sliced appendages clean off. 

sure, it's like skinning an orange, if you're particularly romantic. 

peeling back layers of blood and pink skin and thick, squishy fat in a sickening spiral, 

raising it higher and higher like a fucking sacrifice to the sun, 

that heavy mass of tissue and gore dripping blood all 'round your fucking feet 

and swaying overhead in the wind like the rancid hand of judgment 

always inches from boxing your ears and knocking you right off the ship 

could be likened to the rind of a dying fruit, if you wanna be poetic about it. 

you could call slicing its head off a funeral 

and its rotten muscly corpse a ghost 

and falling into its brain like drowning in honey 

and maybe you can find somethin' a little too tragic about this 

macabre fucking cooking show, somethin' a little too familiar 

about the stench of flesh we burn and the color of brains we kill 

if you think too hard but 

this ain't a job for a poet, greenie. 

we'll slice and burn and boil the poet and the oil 

right out of you both, with enough time.


	8. Day 15: Euphoria (Ishmael/Queequeg)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> when (not if, when) queequeg inevitably survives the wreck and finds ishmael again years later, and it's all okay, it's okay.

“escapril” day 15: euphoria 

_"it gets all right/to dream at night/believe in solid skies and slate blue earth below/but when you see him/you'll know" ... "and you'll breathe easier just knowing that the worst is all behind you, and the waves that tossed the raft all night have set you on dry land" - the mountain goats, 'never quite free'_

the corner of his mouth twitching up, 

briefly, like a heartbeat. 

his heartbeat, beneath my head on his chest, 

warm and fluttering, like a smile. 

i thought i'd lost him, once. thought i'd never 

feel that steady thrum, like seabirds' wingbeats, like 

cyclic sea waves, again. thought i was lost, again, 

more lost after having once been found and left 

aching for that smile, that warmth, that touch but 

he found me, again. 

i think i will always find him again. 

morning falls like rain on us and 

rims his face in a halo of sunrise. 

his mouth twitches up, 

briefly, like a dream. 

i won't wake him yet, but 

curl back up against him instead. dream 

like his smile. safe and soft.


	9. Day 18: How Did the Sky Look? (Queequeg/Ishmael)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> from queequeg's pov. after the shipwreck, before a reunion.

"escapril" day 18: how did the sky look? 

_"first the colors. then the humans. that's usually how i see things. or at least, how i try." - the book thief, markus zusak_

i don't remember what the color of the sky was when i lost you. 

i remember the night before was inky blue dripping 

all over your face, your hands, your question-mark spine, 

i remember the day before was liquid fire melting 

all around our ship, turning the sea to a gilded forge but 

i don't remember the sky the last time i saw your face. 

knocked from the boat. flung astern. lost in waves the color of-- 

i don't know. 

i remember meeting you under winter grey the color of frost on windowpanes 

and i remember falling in love with you under every blue, yellow, and white 

that old ocean's ever seen. i remember kissing you next to sunsets 

the color of heartbeats and through storms the shade of wildness and 

mornings like spilled honey and 

i remember you telling me the kaleidoscope of 

every color you'd fallen in love with and every sky 

you thought you'd drown in 

and i remember seeing, for the first time in my life, 

all the wondrous hues you put names to. 

i don't have a name for the color of the sky when i lost you. 

something the color of heartbreak. something the color of mistake. 

something the color of a wave breaking 

under its own weight. 

something the color of. 


	10. Day 19: Tough to be a Bug (Pip)

“escapril” day 19: tough to be a bug 

_"..the awful lonesomeness is intolerable. the intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my god!" moby dick, 'the castaway'_

i think you'd like to be 

a lot bigger than you are right now, 

wouldn't you, kid? 

think you wished you were the size of a 

buffalo. or a ship. or a whale. 

but you aren't, boy, 

you aren't, and we can't afford 

to lose whales by the likes of you. 

jump again and we won't pick you up but 

don't worry, boy, 

you're small enough to fit in the hands of gods.


	11. Day 21: Hands, Wrists, Teeth (Ishmael/Queequeg)

"escapril" day 21: hands, wrists, teeth 

_“do all lovers feel they're inventing something?” - portrait of a lady on fire_

oh, what will be left of us, i wonder? 

when we've outgrown our bones and beliefs and 

our skin's too small for our skeletons and 

what will be left of us when i can't feel 

your heart in the veins of your wrist anymore? when 

all this is over? 

_love, it is three in the morning_ _._

right. sorry. 

_keep going._

_go on._

i mean-- i don't know. what happens when we-- 

when this ends. 

_(a shift, a stir, a shuffling. an arm reaching out and a heartbeat_

_like a lifeline and a flash of a soft smile.)_

_what is this really about?_

oh, i don't know. 

we both know what's coming. 

_we do._

not what's after. 

_that's true._

so what then? 

_what about what's here?_

_not coming. not after. here already. here now._

_three in the morning. hands and heartbeats and_

_bones and breath and mouths and hands. yours and mine._

_here._

_(a chuckle, a fluttering breath like wings and_

_a flash of laughing eyes)_

that's not really an answer. 

_isn't it?_


	12. Day 24: Black Hole (Starbuck/Ahab)

"escapril" day 24: black hole 

_"my soul is more than matched, she's overmanned, and by a madman!" - moby dick, 'dusk'_

so, this is where the light dies. 

this is where you bring us, pull us, 

task us. captain, oh captain, is this 

what you planned for? did you 

know your darkness had weight, had 

magnitude and magnetic 

force, drawing us in, did you know darkness is 

not light's opposite but its 

confessor? 

captain, did you know this would happen? 

know you'd burn so bright that you'd collapse all that light 

into yourself, know you'd implode 

into your own body, know it would destroy 

all of you, all of us 

with it? does a star know its own collapse? 

know the prison its life implies? 

in your first burst of brilliance. in your first 

grasp at the heavens. could you have known that stars 

live and die this way? 

we knew. i knew. i let your gravity pull 

on me anyway. invisible lines, invisible fabric, 

tying me. weaving me. to you. 

we'll spin closer and closer round this sunken black pit till it 

drags us all down with it till we 

have no choice but to confess our wholes to it till we 

pledge ourselves parts of your perishing star. 

captain, my captain. 

if you had known. if you had known, 

would you still have burned?


	13. Day 27: Fight or Flight (Ishmael/Queequeg)

"escapril" day 27: fight or flight 

_"away with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let us home!" - moby dick, 'the symphony'_

god, i'd take you to the edge of the universe if i could 

and further, god, i'd grab you and run far away 

with everything, away with his unfettered chase 

and their unfaithful complicity and our unflinching fate and our god, 

love, we don't have to play his game, we don't have to fight his monster, his 

god, love, come away with me, i came out here to get away from 

it all but "it all" also has a way of getting away from itself so now it's here too 

much more of this and i think i'm going to lose you 

and i don't think i can. god, i'll take you anywhere 

as long as it's away from here, god, please, let us be away 

from here, please let there be a way 

from this, god, i'd take you there if i could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not the happiest with this one, but you know. hard to crank out a banger every single day for a month.


	14. Day 30: Dusk (Ishmael)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> let us end where we began.

"escapril" day 30: dusk 

_"yet there is hope. time and tide flow wide." - moby dick, 'dusk'_

_"then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago." -moby dick, 'the chase--third day'_

here, then. 

in waning light let us take 

a last, posthumous journey, before 

this old world rolls herself over again. 

the last time i saw you, really saw you, 

was at nightfall. the sun went down with the ship 

and you, buried in it. 

brave and brilliant. 

i wanted to tell this story without having to be 

in it. i wanted to show you what happened without 

having to live in it. 

i don't have a name for the color of the sky 

when i lost you. 

something the color of 

collapse. 

there's something terrifying to 

all that endless. all that blue. 

boundless and brilliant. 

let us end, then, where we began. with an orphan, 

a stranger, a wanderer. left to suffer, left to die 

miraculously saved. 

an unfinished suffocation. an error 

in divine bookkeeping. 

an orphan who keeps coming back to this graveyard. 

trying to understand it. 

here, then. 

in fading light you,  _rising with great force,_

take your last, posthumous journey with me 

as the sea between us rises 

and rolls. 

and all collapses. all collapsed.


End file.
